What Dreams May Come
by Stealth Dragon
Summary: They don't know his team. They don't know his team at all. Shep whump, team friendship, Gen. Beta'd by Wildcat88 Frisco .


What Dreams May Come

by

Stealth Dragon

Rating: PG-13 for violence, language. Gen.

Characters: Sheppard, team.

Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate: Atlantis and that's all you need to know.

Warnings: See the very end for warnings.

Summary: They don't know his team. They don't know them at all. Written for the First Quarterly Ficathon over yonder at Sheps_Atlantis. For AngeloftheRuse. Beta'd by Wildcat88. Shep whump, team friendship.

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John woke up to a dark, damp room, a hole in his memory, and wondered what the hell he'd been drinking. Or drugged with; you don't start at point A, go to point C and completely blank-out on point B without chemical intervention or a good knock to the head. He blinked blearily at pale blue lamps behind half-circle shades, spilling light down a rough stone wall. An equally rough floor chilled the naked skin of his upper body.

Only when touches glided down his back did he freak and try to bolt – he would sometimes let himself get hammered when the situation was safe enough for it, but never _that_ kind of hammered. But the hands touching him wrapped around his biceps, forearms, shoulders and head and yanked him back to the floor without effort. They pinned him stomach-down, making his struggles ineffectual squirms. He saw, out of the corner of both eyes, fingers oily with different shades of paint reach for his back. They slid over his skin, over his shoulder blades, under them, in the spaces between his ribs and down the canal of his spine. He was lifted to his knees so paint could be applied as a white line down his sternum and multi-colored dots around his heart. More paint was dabbed on his throat over the carotids and down the back of his neck.

John couldn't recall a time in his life when he'd felt so violated, and these people hadn't even removed his pants. He could only hope it stayed that way.

Funny thing was, he didn't remember any demands to take part in a weird ritual. For that matter, he didn't remember running into strange people who would demand weird rituals. He remembered stepping through the 'gate into a world like any other world, with trees, meadows and alien birds. He remembered walking through a field with his team, into a forest, and the mouth of a cave, a flash of light... and that was where point B became a fill-in-the-blank between A and C.

"Who the hell are you?" John demanded, looking everywhere but at his own body and the hands painting him. The "artists" were all behind him, the light too weak for him to put detail to the faces hovering in his peripheral. "Where are my people?"

"You will see them," someone said, a female someone, not old but not really young, either, by her voice.

John snorted and smirked. "All just as dolled up?" He could imagine Rodney, tense and squawking about not being anyone's human canvas. It was probably taking more to hold Ronon and Teyla in place than it was John.

"You talk strangely," said the woman.

John's grin felt stiff, tugging the tight skin of his face. "You should hear me after two beers. But I think this has a little more to do with me _not_ being from around here."

The woman sighed, both tired and exasperated. "We are painfully aware of that."

"But we're not bad people," John pressed. "We're explorers, going from world to world, trying to make friends. We don't mean you any harm. Why explore and make friends if you're just going to shoot 'em, right? I'd get my ass fired faster than you could blink if we went around harming people... on purpose." That last part made him swallow and wince.

"Maybe," said the woman. Paint decorated the hollows above and below his collarbones, swirling and curving like foreign letters. When the letters were finished, the painting stopped, but John remained held in place on his knees. He heard behind him the rustle of cloth and the shift and scrape of movement.

Then a woman stood before him, about his age, tall and willowy, her oval face surrounded by waves of auburn hair highlighted with yellow. She was flanked by two men standing at parade rest. What sent John's brain reeling was their dress: like Traveler uniforms, made of leather, only colored dark forest green. The woman wore a sleeveless vest over a billowing skirt that shimmered and a holster holding a small egg-shaped gun around her waist. She stared at John while she snapped off elastic paint-smeared gloves. Her hands scrubbed almost frantically any wayward flecks of paint with a course cloth.

John stared right back. There was no defying fear, but you could sure as hell pretend you were defying it, and John had always had the right amount of pissed to be pretty damn good at it. "So is this the part where you stick me on a pedestal in your local museum? Velvet ropes, demands to hold my arms out so everyone can get the full effect, crap like that?" He smiled in the way that in the past had resulted in him getting slapped, punched, sometimes kicked in unmentionable places. It usually hurt like hell depending on the strength (sometimes knocked him clean out), or the location (sometimes made it impossible to stand), but it was a price well-paid for a little control. Having control, any kind of control, even dust motes of it, provided a reason to hope; a reason to hope kept one alert and ready to make that hope viable.

It also frustrated the bad guys, and a flustered bad guy could be a clumsy, off-guard bad guy.

"No," the woman said, scraping her skin until it was raw and paint-free. And John had thought Rodney's hands in love with wet-wipes. What he couldn't figure was why they didn't just use paintbrushes. But then when were rituals ever logical?

"Bring him," the woman said. She turned her back on him and walked away like someone in a hurry. Her two guards grabbed John's arms, relieving whoever had been holding him up. They lifted him to his feet and forced him to walk or be dragged. A smooth metal door hidden behind shadows slid open, pouring brighter blue into the "dungeon" yet not bright enough to blind. John was dragged down a carved corridor of natural stone with a polished floor like chocolate-colored marble. The place was cold, even with small, narrow vents puffing out weak heat.

Left, left, then right, past more smooth doors and men and women in leather uniforms. Their faces were pale and in the blue light they looked down right sickly. It made quite the contrast to their strong, lean bodies and clear, hard eyes. They acknowledged John with a cool look as though he were about as interesting as the walls. A couple of looks seemed annoyed.

"Wow, your work's not popular already. What say you cut your losses and let me and my people go?"

The woman said nothing. They took another left, all the way to the end of the corridor and the door there. It slid open when she passed her palm over a familiar crystal panel, although more narrow, with only two crystals.

They entered a massive chamber that hit John with a burst of chilled air, making him shiver. Light flashed off a giant glass screen dominating the wall across from the door, hovering over a console of Lantean design.

"You guys wouldn't be Ancients or Ancestors by any chance would yo--- oh, hell no!"

What John saw in the center of the chamber gave him reason enough to start struggling.

A table: cold, clean metal with metal restraints. Another woman, young and blond, stood behind a small control pedestal, holding down a switch that lifted the table upright. A small table was on the other side, supporting a tray of syringes and bladed tools.

The tools increased John's struggles into kicking, squirming and digging his bare heels into the slick floor.

He gasped. "No, no, no, no, you don't need to do this. Whatever you're doing, you don't need to. I told you, we don't mean you any harm."

"That is for us to decide," said the auburn-haired woman. She stood at the console, pressing buttons and flicking switches.

John threw himself backward with force enough to wrench his arm free. He swung both arm and his upper-body, putting everything he had behind the punch to make it count.

His arm sailed inches from the second guard's face. John stumbled, suddenly dizzy and nauseous. He doubled over, pressing his free arm into his churning stomach, and the guards let him. The churning escalated into bucking; bile shot into John's throat and he heaved, painting the pristine floor with half-digested oatmeal. When the next heave was dry, the guards reclaimed his arms and dragged him to the table.

They were surprisingly gentle as they leaned him against it, the perfect opportunity for a second fight back, except John wasn't feeling too hot. His eyes burned, his head felt like it was being split in two with a chisel, and his stomach was pissed it didn't have anything else to shove up his throat. Imagine the meanest flu, times it by five and that summed up how John felt. Minus a fever. His skin felt coated in ice, seeping in through his back against the table. He shivered until his teeth clacked.

John flinched when the restraints snapped over his wrists, ankles and head. Monitor pads were pressed to his chest where there wasn't paint. A thin band of metal bristling with wires was slid onto his skull above the head restraint.

John panted. "I guess it's safe to say... you're not benevolent Ancients." He hiccupped a nervous chuckle.

"I do not know who these Ancients are. Please try to relax and watch the screen," the woman said, as though she expected him to do anything but relax. Smart lady. John's heart was beating with concussive force and at a frenzied speed. His respirations trying to keep up provoked a dizziness that made the world seem to drop out from under him over and over. Darkness framed his vision, creeping in. John wished it would move faster; he didn't give a damn that unconsciousness meant having no clue as to what was being done to him. If whatever happened next involved a scalpel, then hell yes he wanted to black out.

An oxygen mask was placed over his face, and he jumped. A needle slid into the crook of his arm, and he jumped harder. The screen in front of him came to life with a transparent white light. In each corner small displays popped into existence and they weren't pretty – the heart monitor in the upper right hand corner was a damn X-ray: a ghostly white rib-cage wrapped around a brighter white, pulsating lump, red lines jumping beneath it. The respiratory monitor was like the Ancient scanner on Atlantis, all colors and computer-animated renditions, and all focused on the inflating and deflating lungs while stats scrolled across the bottom. The bottom right hand corner was another Ancient scan, this time of the brain. John couldn't begin to figure or describe what the final display was – too many stats and colors.

He kind of liked the colors.

The center of the giant screen remained empty.

John lost sight of the screen when the table was tilted back. But it was all good; he had his own screen hovering above him, unnoticed until it had been turned on. It pulsed and flickered like a rainbow Aurora Borealis, filling his vision until it was all he saw. It was kind of... soothing, pretty. So pretty. He'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

"Please state your name," a voice said from... somewhere. Another place. Another world, maybe. John blinked as though just waking up, except he couldn't be awake when he knew he was asleep.

Wasn't he?

"John Sheppard." He blinked again. Why did he say that? Did he say that? Had that been his voice? He sounded so tired. Then he remembered he was dreaming so he probably hadn't said anything.

"What is it you do, John Sheppard?" the voice asked, much more friendly this time. The Aurora Borealis faded and John wished it wouldn't. It ended up being replaced with something much nicer, though – him in a helicopter, 'jumper, flying over endless desert, then endless snow, then endless space and it was wonderful.

"'M pilot."

Flying faded, replaced by him and his team, kicking through a field of golden grass. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. Perfect flying weather. Next time he would bring a 'jumper.

"Explorer."

Explorer. He'd always wanted to say that of himself since he was a kid – an explorer, exploring the world in his flying machine.

"With weapons?" the voice cut in. The voice was annoying.

Fading. The nice day was gone. There was danger, now: Wraith in the woods. No, on a hive ship. Everywhere, shooting stunners.

"Gotta. Dangers. Gotta... protect. S'what I do, too."

"Your people, the ones who explore with you. What do they do?"

The danger left. Teyla came, copper-haired and smiling. She flattened John with a sweep of her bantos rods.

"Teyla, um. She leads. Has people she... leads. Helps us... shows us around new worlds." She had her son in her lap, was bouncing him on her knee. John smiled. "Good mom."

"The others?"

Ronon came where Teyla left. He was running, he was in the cave, he was twirling his blaster and grinning because he just saved John's ass again. Or maybe stunned him – Ronon liked doing that too much.

"Protects, too. Helps us fight... bad guys."

Ronon blasted Wraith down one at a time.

Then he left. It was Rodney now, messing with the crystals of a broken 'jumper. Not Superman, but pretty close.

"Scientist. Smart ass. Biggest brain in two galaxies. Can do anything."

"They seem very dangerous."

John tried to shake his head. Funny, he couldn't move it, then remembered that this was just a dream.

"Only when... danger."

Danger: Wraith, Genii, creatures. Things exploded, like hive ships and buildings. A chunk of solar system.

"They seem capable of dangerous acts. Are they loyal?"

John grinned. They fought, side by side, him and his team. "Very."

"You are so sure?"

"Yes."

"What if we told you it was one of your own that betrayed you to us, to save his own life?"

John immediately snorted. "Bull."

"It is true."

"It's bull. They'd never--"

"Yet they did, John. They did."

John's muscles tensed, his heart hammered. He could feel his fingers curl against something cold and solid. They didn't feel like his fingers, but the action was his. The anger.

"The hell they did."

"Deny it all you wish. It is the truth. All men are capable of betrayal, even those we call friends, or family."

_I am pregnant_.

Ronon, in a Wraith facility, slugged John who was on his knees as a Wraith stood by and watched.

John and Rodney tore through the stargate just as a chunk of solar system disintegrated.

"You cannot tell me they are not capable."

John sighed, closed his eyes. "Shit happens. Not the same thing."

"It was the scientist. He betrayed you."

Rodney, cowering from Wraith and gun blasts.

John growled through clenched teeth. "No."

Rodney, firing with everything he had at Wraith, at Genii, at anyone who would dare hurt his team.

"He wanted our knowledge. He offered you to us in exchange for that knowledge."

One of Rodney's science team burned alive in a tunnel filling with alien radiation, Rodney had asked John to trust him; they almost died. John had been hard on him, but he had to be. Lessons are learned the hard way or how else would they be remembered?

Rodney, on the Aurora, braving an unknown virtual system because he didn't know what had happened to John.

"You suck at lying," John slurred.

"The big man offered you to save the woman."

John's breath hitched and jumped with silent laughter. Ronon, on Sateda, had threatened to shoot John if he interfered. He refused to leave John trapped in the rubble. He always refused to leave. For a soldier, he sucked at taking orders. But like John could talk.

Teyla would no sooner let Ronon make that kind of decision than abandon her son. Unless she had been unconscious. In which case, the moment she woke up, she'd immediately kick his ass. She kicked Michael's ass instead, grabbed his arm when he was about to crush John's skull with his fist. She fought him, sent him to his death, ridding the galaxy of Atlantis' mistake.

"You don't know them," John breathed. "You don't know... anything. You're lying. You're lying. You're lying..." over and over again.

"Then it is a pity. We were forced to destroy them."

John's heart stumbled over its own beat. "You're lying."

"See for yourself."

Motion made the world tip and sway and John's stomach thrash, pushing up nothing. He gagged and thought it strange that one could do that in a dream. He was facing a screen with little odd images in each corner. He was more interested in the center, the image of his team kneeling, hands tied behind their backs.

A man stood behind them, faceless because all John saw was the lower half of the body. Faceless-man positioned himself behind Rodney – Rodney, trying so hard to look stoic but scared out of his wits. The man placed an egg-shaped gun to his head.

"You may begin," the woman said. John knew she wasn't talking to him.

The face-less man fired.

Blood sprayed. Rodney went face down. He didn't move. He didn't speak.

"No," John said, thought he said it. It had sounded so small, barely above a whisper, thinned by loss the size and depth of a black hole.

The man moved to Teyla, who was stoic, but so sad. He aimed, fired; blood sprayed.

"No!" Louder this time, a cracked holler of agony. "No, no, no..."

Ronon, looking at nothing, expressing nothing. The man fired. Ronon went down. There was so much blood.

"Nooooo!" John screamed and screamed and screamed until there was no air in his lungs. He sucked air in, screamed louder and longer as he squirmed and thrashed. Images flashed, so many, so fast: his team running, walking, laughing, mourning, eating together, killing together, saving each other – always saving each other...

"Your loyalty is well placed," said a female voice. "It is to be admired. You are of no threat. We are done here."

John was suffocating under a crushing pain that no physical pain could begin to even comprehend. He didn't feel the prick in his arm, but when darkness flooded his eyes, a quiet, timid voice sighed that it was about damn time.

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John awoke in a golden field with cotton in his mouth and a skull-shattering headache, and wondered what the hell he'd been drinking. He rolled onto his back with a groan, looked down at himself and the mess of colors painted all over his body. He furrowed his brow.

What _had_ he been drinking?

Then he remembered.

John flipped onto his stomach in time for dry heaving – five times before exhaustion and cramps made him drop to the ground in a gasping sprawl.

Rodney on his knees, brains blown out the front of his skull, flashed in John's head. Then Teyla. Then Ronon, lying in their own blood and brain matter. And it hurt, like his own bullet to his own brain. John pushed himself onto trembling arms for another round of heaves, got halfway then dropped. He sucked in a shuddering breath, exhaled on a sob that hitched his chest against a hard, scratchy ground.

His team was dead.

John's bottom lip quivered. He tasted salt, felt moisture slicking his face.

Rodney, Ronon, Teyla: laughing, mourning, running... heads blown away one by one.

There'd been so much damn blood. And they hadn't move, not even Rodney who'd never been so still, so impossibly quiet. _They hadn't moved._

Grief wrapped around John like a fist until he couldn't breathe. He curled into himself, shaking. His stomach ached like a bastard and all he wanted to do was puke. He pressed his arms against his gut, digging in with his elbows and creating a new pain to take him away from the other pains. Without anything in his stomach, he didn't have the luxury to purge. He closed his eyes.

Then opened them with the sun having changed position in the sky. He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep, but felt groggy and his eyes sticky, so obviously he had. The grief was still there, smothering but not suffocating, and he realized that his insides had gone numb. He lifted his head with distant curiosity as to whether his team had been left for a proper burial.

They hadn't. All John saw was his vest, GDO...

A necklace of bones. A PC tablet, blood-spatter on the screen. Nothing else.

John gagged, coughed, spit.

They wanted him to leave his team behind.

Then he screamed.

"You sons of _bitches!_" He ripped up grass and threw it in the direction he knew they'd come. It was all he had the means for and it pissed him off. He curled into himself with his elbows on his thighs and his arms over his head. There was a desire to cry himself dry without the energy to do so. Each breath hiccupped in a chest that felt tight and bruised.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't go back without them.

_Come back for them. Bring reinforcements._

He didn't want to. He wanted to go back now; bring them back _now_.

_It's the only choice you've got. Deal with it._

John tried pushing himself to his feet. Dizziness sideswiped him and he dropped back to his knees. So be it; he would crawl, then, and he did, pulling himself up as much as he could by using the DHD. He dialed, the 'gate burst to life and he sent his IDC. He'd found his radio with his vest.

"Colonel Sheppard?" said a surprised Chuck.

"Yeah," John croaked. It didn't sound like his voice.

"Um, shield's down. You can come home."

"Yeah," John said. He pushed himself from the DHD to the gate, vest and tablet dragging in one hand, GDO and necklace in the other. He stumbled, swayed, tripped and squeezed his eyes when his chest cinched. He couldn't do this.

_You don't have a choice._

He stumbled through the 'gate. Stumbling out the other side, he gagged. Hands grabbed him, supporting him but he flinched away from them.

"I left them," he gasped. "I left..." He looked up.

Right into the face of Rodney McKay.

John started falling, but blacked out before he hit the floor.

-----------------------------

"...slow leaving his system. The paint has a toxin that it releases methodically through the skin into the blood stream. Just the right amount to affect brain chemistry but not kill him."

The woman sounded different, now. John's eyes rolled behind closed lids. He wondered how he could be asleep when he was already sleeping.

"It's not really a sedative, more like a relaxant, like Valium but stronger. It may have opened his mind to suggestion."

John's eyes felt sticky, gritty. He tried to move his hands to rub them clean but couldn't.

"I think he's waking up."

John forced his eyelids apart.

Rodney's face hovered over him, all big smiles showing teeth. "Hey, pal. Finally got enough beauty sle--"

John screamed. Rodney's face contorted in fear then vanished, replaced by Keller who wasn't Keller. It was the woman; John knew it was the woman. He was strapped down, seeing Rodney who was dead. They were all dead. This was just a dream - reality disguised as a dream. He was still strapped down and she was still hovering out of sight, making him think, remember.

Now they were going to cut him open.

"John. John! Calm down, you have to--" said not-Keller, looking shocked. John struggled against the restraints, tugged and pulled and twisted, ignoring the pain it caused until one broke. He swung a bloody fist out, connecting with Keller's jaw. She staggered back. John shoved away another nurse, who ran into a hefty male nurse. It bought John time to undo the strap on his other arm then leap off the bed into a run toward the door.

A marine who John knew wasn't a marine tried to intercept by stunning John. John twisted out of the way, the stun skimming an inch from his stomach, then he grabbed the man's wrist, twisting until the gun dropped. John got behind the guy and pulled his arm up behind his back. He slammed the not-marine into the wall. The man crumpled in a heap to the ground. John grabbed the man's sidearm and took off through the door and down the hall.

John ran, his legs burning and sweat pouring down his body. He passed doors that should have been smaller, smoother, and people who stared at him in shock and horror.

They weren't real. None of this was real. He had to get out and get out now before they killed him, too. He had to live so he could bring his team back, bury them, not leave them behind.

He owed it to them – he'd failed them.

John turned a sharp right around the corner where he skidded to a stop before colliding with someone coming the other way. He lifted his gun.

Teyla stared at it with wide, frightened eyes, her hands raised.

John blinked sweat from his eyes. When that didn't work, he swiped at them with a shaking hand.

"John?" Teyla said. It sounded so much like her.

John shook his head. "You're dead."

"No," Teyla said, reasonable and calm even if she was afraid. "I am not."

"You are. I saw it. I saw..."

"John. What you saw was not real. I promise you."

"This isn't real."

"It is," Teyla said. "It is and I will prove it to you. Just, please, lower the gun. I know you do not want to hurt me."

Teyla, stoic and sad, dropping face-first in a spray of blood besieged John's thoughts. His lungs caught on a breath and his stomach kicked. He lowered the gun.

Real or not, he would never hurt Teyla. He would never hurt any of them.

John was grabbed from behind with strong arms pinning his arms to his side. John shouted, struggled and kicked. He arched his back trying to break free. He wouldn't let them take him again. He would die before they strapped him back to that table.

A bass voice shouted in John's ear, "Stop! Sheppard, stop! It's me. Ronon!"

But John shouted back, "Dead! You're dead! You're all dead! They killed you! You're _dead_!"

"John, listen to me! Listen." The arms wrapped tighter until they were crushing John to the broad chest vibrating with that deep voice. "You feel that! Feel, it, Sheppard! I'm real. We're real!"

A heart beat against John's shoulder blade. John still shook his head. It was someone else's heart. This wasn't real, none of it. He felt himself being hefted down the hall so he increased his struggles. He had to break free. He wouldn't last much longer; he could feel what energy he had draining fast.

He was half-carried, half-dragged into an empty room, smaller than the chamber, with counters cluttered in laptops and Ancient parts. He was brought to a corner where not-Ronon pressed him to the wall with his body, long enough to shift his hold to John's arms. He then flipped John around and forced him to sit on the floor where the bigger man straddled his legs while keeping him pressed to the wall. Escape was officially impossible.

"Look at me, Sheppard," Ronon said. John didn't want to, looking anywhere but at not-Ronon. Not-Ronon grabbed both sides of John's face and kept turning his head until John had nowhere to look but at Ronon.

"Look at me, buddy," Ronon said, more gentle. "Come on. It's okay. Just look."

John hiccupped and looked in the hopes that it would make it all end sooner. Dark green eyes locked onto his, so real, so damn alive. The fist returned, crushing John's ribs into his lungs, and his eyes burned.

"That's it," Ronon said. "That's it, buddy. You're doing good."

John gasped. He wanted to look away so bad it made him shake.

"You're dead."

Ronon shook his head. "No."

"I saw. Them – they didn't leave your bodies."

"Because it wasn't real."

"I left you behi--"

"_No_!" Ronon barked. John flinched. Ronon said more softly, "You were unconscious. They brought you before us, said they'd kill you if we didn't get on our knees and let them tie us up. They pressed some kind of... injecting-thing into our necks: fast acting. It was a sedative. They didn't kill us, just knocked us out. Whatever you saw, it was fabricated. We're not dead, John. I swear to you on my life that we are very much alive."

Teyla knelt on Ronon's right side. When she took John's hand in hers, he jumped but had no energy to pull away.

"We are real, John," she said. Her hand was warm in his – warm and alive. He could feel her pulse in his palm.

Rodney knelt awkwardly on Ronon's left. "Yeah, very real." He swallowed, and even in the wan light, John could tell that he was pale. "We... we're the ones who left you behind. To get help, of course. But then we got help and couldn't find the entrance to the cave, so we went back so that I could modify the sensor on the LSDs and Woolsey didn't want us all to stay behind in case those people tried to take us again and the modifications were taking a while and we had to keep going back and..." he paused, sucked in a shuddering breath.

"I'm sorry, John. We tried... then you came back. We're so sorry. But we are real. All of this is real." He took John's other hand, balled it into a fist save for two fingers that he pressed to the pulse-point on his wrist. "See? Not dead, not fake."

John stared at each of them. It felt so real, looked so real, he didn't know what the hell to think. He felt sick with uncertainty and suddenly very cold. He asked, because it felt like the only sane thing to say, "Why?"

"They said it was a test," said Rodney. "To see what kind of people we were... or something. They said you were the one who had to go through it since you were the leader. Then they kicked us out."

And it sounded almost logical enough to be true. Wasn't that the trick to hallucinations and insanity? That nothing made sense?

John still didn't know what to believe. He did know what he _wanted_ to believe, and that was this, here, now – Ronon's hands on his face, Teyla's hand in his, Rodney's around his fist; their warmth, their life, their reality. But he still saw them, pitched forward and dead.

So he bowed his head in a futile attempt at hiding the tears sliding down his face. Ronon moved off his legs then gathered John to his chest. John felt Teyla rub his back and Rodney's tenacious grip on his arm as though hanging on for dear life.

"They said you betrayed me," John whispered. "I called 'em liars."

Rodney snorted. "Good."

"I thought... it looked so real. When they..."

"Bastards," said Ronon.

"You guys," John said huskily. It was hard to talk through a tight throat. He wondered why he was talking at all – it was rather uncomfortable, but he seemed to have gained momentum and wasn't going to stop. "You guys know, right? What you, you know... what you mean? To me? And stuff? That you're... that you matter and..."

"We know," Teyla said.

"Good," John said. Then he passed out.

-----------------------

John didn't think he'd been drinking. He woke up feeling – not good. Not really bad, either. Cotton-mouth, dry eyes but a throb instead of his skull splitting, and his body feeling sluggish yet rested. He was lying on something soft, softer under his head, and something light and warm over top of him. He lifted his head enough to see a pillow and mat below him and a dark-blue blanket covering him. He also realized he was still in the lab that Ronon had dragged him to. His face felt tight, kind of crusty under his nose when he wiped away the saliva around his mouth. His stomach felt empty instead of queasy – definitely an improvement.

Familiar clacking turned his attention to Rodney sitting against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him and a laptop in his lap. Ronon and Teyla had the corner, slumped against each other, fast asleep.

"How long was I out?" John rasped. It was like flipping a switch: Rodney set his laptop aside to pour water from a bottle into a plastic cup. He handed it to John. John was happy to see that his hand didn't shake when he took it.

"Three hours," Rodney said, sitting back. He took up his laptop. "Keller wanted you back in the infirmary but taking into consideration what happened last time, we all agreed it was a bad idea. Besides, who needs an infirmary when you have portable scanners and, well, portable everything?"

When John reassessed himself did he finally notice the I.V. in his hand and a bandage around his wrist.

Rodney waved a hand at the wrist. "Keller's amazed you didn't break that. Anyway, so you're staying here until you say so."

"Oh," said John, wriggling deeper under the blankets. He stopped then narrowed his eyes at Rodney. "Did I... cry or something?"

"Yes," Rodney said, nonchalant, like it was something they did often enough for it not to matter anymore.

John's face still burned. "Oh."

Rodney lifted a shoulder that whispered against the material of his jacket. "You were drugged. I know how that can be."

"Yeah." John half-lidded his eyes. He didn't want to go to sleep yet. He wanted to watch his team, just for a little bit, see them upright and so very alive. He saw Rodney stop typing and look up, spreading his hands lightly over the keys as if to keep his fingers still.

He cleared his throat. "You also matter to us," he said quickly. He went back to typing. "In case you didn't know."

John rubbed the side of his face. There was moisture there, still warm. "I know."

"Good," Rodney said. John then noticed that Rodney was sitting so that his thigh was touching John's foot. John remembered Ronon holding him and Teyla's hand in his. He imagined that, one day, he would look back on it with embarrassment and maybe a touch of fondness. Today, it let him sleep without dreaming.

The End

Warnings: Drugging. Fake character deaths though no actual character deaths. Language.


End file.
